BAND

Not a band

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It’s time to sign off now ;)

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Design Solution

The theme that we are designing for is - Adapting to the changing times - creating awareness, facilitating learning and education.

And the problem area that we have identified and want to solve for is - Technical Atma-nirbhata of middle-aged small business owners in the semi-urban Indian landscape. which leads us to the design inquiry - How might we equip new and existing small business owners with knowledge and resources to make them resilient in the new normal?​

What our solution does?

It is an app that acts as an extension to available mobile business apps and enables the user to use these unknown and new technology by giving them a helping hand just like the 20-something tech-kid that a parent would turn to for help on what this app does, what to do, what does this mean, which button to press, what will happen if you take this step, how to navigate the app and more. 

How it works?

The app works on machine learning, identifying the drop-off points in popular business apps and providing dynamic assistance according to the users to lead them to the business apps' ideal workflow. The app would train on app workflows (ideal and problem flows) and app tutorials available on the internet. 

For example, the solution provides assistive overlay over an app like whatsapp business, and tells the user ‘Sayan’ what to do next, which button to press, what the current step means in a natural vernacular language (along with audio instructions) and thus gives Sayan the confidence and guidance to use any business app to boost his offline business in the new online landscape of new normal where customers are shifting to online delivery, online ordering and other online business activities over trying to find brick and mortar stores physically. 

Strengths

This application assists the user in vernacular language based on user's demographic location. This can be used as an extension for all the business lasting applications.

Limitations

Discoverability of the application: this application is designed to be an extension for any of  local business listing application. Hence this needs to be installed separately. As there are many such applications in market, this app needs to be developed to adapt to all these different applications separately.

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Thank God for split screens! 

Putting it all together to show how our Assistive overlays, would make Sayan (our user) technologically independent and fearless.

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Mini Challenge 2 (work in progress)

Things

Things are coming along!

Our solution acts as a hand-holding assistant to teach and train middle-aged small business owners how to use the current technology to their benefit to improve and pivot their business activities according to the demands of the new normal. And we all know, being digital makes everything just a lot more discoverable, convenient and approachable. So why should the benefits be availed only by the tech-savvy generation? Let's help our parents and their generation, how have years of business experience, become technologically independent and fearless too.

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Mini Challenge 2 - (work in progress)

Current thought on our minds? 

How might we equip new and existing small business owners with knowledge and resources to make them resilient, independent and comfortable with using new technologies of the changing time? 

The possibilities are endless, but we’ve found our best bet. Time to shape what was part of the brain dump into the proposed design solution.  Can we do it before the deadline? Kar k dikhayenge. Han bhai han!

Han Kar hi lenge. :3

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Mini Challenge 2 - (work in progress)

As the night is growing dark, the cold is increasing in our cities and our braincells are almost giving up. And yet all our team members but one is confused as to what’s happening to the rest of us, as she sits comfortably with her fan still on. Talk about empathy... sigh.

Next up on our agenda - Studying the existing market solutions and dividing our ideations into the categories of Evolutionary and Revolutionary solutions, because one of the many things that Covid-19 has taught us is - “Change is the only constant” and we need to keep adapting, as those who survive can only thrive.

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Mini Challenge 2 (Work in progress)

When your videos have turned off, and your team members start derailing from the topic at hand, you know it’s time for a break to maintain the sanity of the group. Off we go, before we return again to look at the impact we envision to achieve with our design solution before starting with the next phase - ideation! It’s gonna be a looooong night. 

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Mini challenge - 2 (work in progress)

After alot of discussion, debate and drama, we’ve created our personas of new and existing small business owners in the new normal. With everyone’s business being hit adversely due to covid-19, resilient businesses are the need of the hour. Hence, our team is focusing on the problem statement - “Designing for resilience in Small Businesses in India” 

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Mini challenge 2 (work in progress) 

 This year’s theme for Designathon2020 is ‘ Adapting to the Changing times - Creating Awareness, Facilitating Learning and Education. ’

Looking at how Covid-19 changed our lives, and is still affecting it, brought back some major flashbacks! Our team has thus far, read the brief, re-read the brief, and rephrased the brief according to what it means to different users.

We’ve realized that really ‘change begins at home’, and hence the target group that we’ll be focusing on are the people we live with, and interact with in our daily lives - our parents, local shop owners, small businesses and more. Time for cooking up some user personas next!

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Is this the real life, or is this just fantasy

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Mini-Challenge-1 Meet Team BAND - Bhagyesh, Afrin, Niharika and Deepika!

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All geared up for the designathon 2020 by ValueLabs